Recent touch-sensitive interactive displays are often thought to be appealing since users can touch virtual objects. Together with multi-touch features and fast graphics capability, the “direct touch” aspect of these systems allows a more convincing simulation of the manipulation of physical objects (such as paper documents, photos, etc.) than previously available with conventional input devices.
Recent work has demonstrated the use of sensing and display technologies to enable interactions directly above the interactive surface, but these are confined to the physical extent of the display. Virtual and augmented reality techniques can be used to go beyond the confines of the display by putting the user in a completely virtual 3D environment, or a blend of the real and virtual worlds. Unfortunately, to be truly immersive, such approaches typically require cumbersome head mounted displays and tracking devices.